Where children shared dreams of the future: the Austrian media spoke about the everyday life of a front-line school in Donbass
In a report by Simone Brenner published in the Austrian Standard is told about how they live, study and what children dream about in frontline Marinka, Donetsk region. “Fifteen-year-old Lisa wants to be a biology teacher and researcher, and live in Dnepropetrovsk. And her friend Dasha dreams of being a lawyer and living in Donetsk, on the other side of the front.”
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“Marinka suffered the most from the war in eastern Ukraine. Occupied by militias in the spring of 2014, in the summer it was already under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The front actually passes within the city, which makes it very dangerous for the lives of civilians, a “gray zone,” the publication says.
“Almost half of ten thousand inhabitants left the city. There are those left who do not want to give up their property, house, apartment, and some – the job that still remains. All factories in Marinka have been destroyed or closed. The majority of residents depend on humanitarian aid,” the journalist describes the situation.
“Before the war, three hundred and fifty children went to school. Today it's almost one hundred and sixty. Fifteen-year-old Lisa and Dasha are two of them. Lisa did not sleep all night because of the shelling. “When you go to bed in the evening, there is only one thing in your head: will there be shelling today?” - she says. The war in Ukraine has a night face. At dusk, as soon as the OSCE observers leave their positions, the shooting begins. During the day the shooting stops, but in the afternoon the streets are already empty and few of the open shops are closed,” notes Simone Brenner.
“In the school foyer there is a schedule, and next to it there is a warning about mines. The corridors are marked with green and red stripes. Green ones indicate areas where you should move during shelling. The school bell rings. Children run down the corridor laughing. And the second time you notice that a completely new metal-plastic window has been pierced by a bullet. Students carry sandbags and place them on the windowsills. War has become quite commonplace for them,” the publication says.
Most recently, the school received new windows instead of those broken by the blast wave of artillery shelling. And so, on the night from the third to the fourth of October, the school was shelled again and the sparkling snow-white frames made of foreign plastic on the gray brick building were already gaping with holes from shrapnel.
“The worst thing was in the first winter of the war,” school director Lyudmila Panchenko tells the reporter. - After all, the gas pipeline was broken. The children in the classrooms were freezing, wrapped in sweatshirts, and frost appeared on their shoes. The heating was converted to solid fuel, and there were always electric heaters in the rooms.”
But cold weather is coming soon, and, apparently, they will have to wait a long time for the gas pipeline to be repaired. After all, the front line lies just one and a half kilometers from the school, sums up the author of the publication
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